Sources tell Dallas South News that Dallas County Judge Jim Foster and Dallas County Commissioner Ken Mayfield will head to Austin today looking to meet with the Attorney General’s office regarding problems with Democratic Primary elections in Justice of the Peace Districts 1 & 5.

Sylvia Rhodes-Bradley

Jim Mitchell of the Dallas Morning News has previously written of Sylvia Rhodes-Bradley’s challenge of Justice of the Peace Thomas G. Jones’ petitions to be placed on the Democratic ballot for J.P. Place 1 Precinct 1. According to Mitchell, Rhodes-Bradley “contends that the Democratic party chair Darlene Ewing allowed Jones to amend his petitions after the filing deadline…”

This morning I spoke with Ms. Rhodes-Bradley who confirmed that she has filed a lawsuit regarding petitions submitted by Jones to have his name placed on the Democratic Primary ballot.

Mrs. Bradley told Dallas South News that she went down to the Dallas County Democratic Office on January 8th to check the status of Jones’ petitions. She says that the overwhelming majority of the petitions Mr. Jones submitted were not notarized.

Judge Thomas G. Jones

Bradley says she then took a typed challenge to Ms. Ewing and the Democratic Party on January 11th seeking to have Jones’ name removed from the ballot because his paperwork was not in order by the January 4th deadline. Ms. Bradley claims that Ewing then allowed Jones to make changes to the petitions in question.

Prior to that, on January 8th, Ms. Bradley questioned the Elections Division of the Office of the Secretary of the State. She asked (in an email) if the 63 pages of Jones’ non notarized petitions which she had obtained were valid. She received a response from the Secretary of States Office which said “The petition pages which were not notarized are not valid. Section 141.065 of the Election Code provides that each part of a petition must include an affidavit of the person who circulated it.”

Rhodes-Bradley asked further about the code and received the following information from the Secretary of State:

Sec. 141.065. AFFIDAVIT OF CIRCULATOR. (a) Each part of a petition must include an affidavit of the person who circulated it stating that the person:

(1) pointed out and read to each signer, before the petition was signed, each statement pertaining to the signer that appears on the petition;

(2) witnessed each signature;

(3) verified each signer’s registration status; and

(4) believes each signature to be genuine and the corresponding information to be correct.

(b) If a petition contains an affidavit that complies with Subsection (a), for the purpose of determining whether the petition contains a sufficient number of valid signatures, the authority with whom the candidate’s application is filed may treat as valid each signature to which the affidavit applies, without further verification, unless proven otherwise.

Sources say that Foster and Mayfield will follow up on these charges with the State Attorney General’s office today as well as the race in the Precinct 5 Justice of the Peace Democratic Primary where Judge Luis Sepulveda lost to Carlos Medrano. Sepulveda received more votes on election day, but Medrano won with more that double the mail-in votes.